It should also be noted that my dummy dps might have been higher if dummies weren't stunable (storm bolt), like bosses usually aren't (but I was gaining aoe damage from dragon roar, although not intended - its probably a wash. maybe.).

Any particular reason you went with Storm Bolt? With Arms low damage from passives (melee + DW = ~20% in your parse) and Opportunity Strike counting as a yellow, I'd think Bloodbath would be the choice for that tier.

I'm not overly concerned with how damage compares yet vs. other specs, but it's interesting to see this baseline.

Nekronom:

Rage - You really have to screw things up to starve yourself in a single target encounter. Patience is key here - by allowing myself to ride a bit to the upper levels of rage (remember that I had the glyph), I created situations that allowed me to fit 3 slams inside a CS debuff, or 2 slams and a talent/talent+HS, without starvation or initial rage capping required. A bit more experimentation and I think I can pull this off more reliably. You might note from my parse that I kept berserker rage more or less on CD - in reflection, Im not sure that was the right idea. Rather than synching my BR around MS for the rage gain, I should be synching it to just before a white swing - that way Im always guarenteed 2 white swings during that enrage for 18 extra rage, and I'm still likely to get the 5 additional rage on MS. I'd also be less likely to clip enrages, or at the very least minimize the overlap. If I were to tie BR to MS all the time, sometimes I'd get 2 white swings, but sometimes I'd only get one, and i'd have an increasing probabillity of overlapping enrages, reducing the effectiveness of the cooldown.

Ability stacking within CS and judicious BR usage are also important on Live (where BR lasts 4 seconds longer); it may be sad that many don't take advantage of BRs added rage from damage taken (esp. on encounters like Ulta), but it's still there. Live has the added wrinkle of IR often being paired with BR to take advantage. I guess I didn't really consider this interplay as a nuance of the new rotation since it's something that's already being pressed.

Nekronom:

Stats - I really think expertise, mastery and haste are probably valued higher than we're giving credit for. Still probably not as high as hit or maybe crit, but definately higher than cata levels, and here's why: Sudden Death.

Yeah I've been wondering if CS' high damage was intended since initial tests @ 85. It looks like it might stick given how close Arms is to their ideal unbuffed DPS benchmark for the first tier.

Ditching Expertise to slightly boost numbers is one area where I've gladly departed from theorycraft based on encounter experience. I never want to see dodges because I want reliable damage, particularly during shorter burst windows (eg. Yor'sahj oozes, Rag's sons and LK's Valks -- where I was scarred in the first place).

One thing we are going to try is increasing the rage from autoattacks somewhat, but not all the way back to 5. Something like 3 or 3.5 might be the right ballpark, but then lowering the rage gained from Enrage.

To expand upon that, we wanted Enrage to feel exciting (insofar as any proc that happens routinely can feel exciting) and flood the warrior with rage. We also wanted rage to feel a little unpredictable, because that's what drives things like Heroic Strike use. With very predictable rage income, the resource feels too much like energy, and Heroic Strike doesn't get much use.

However, I think the problem we ran into was that rage income while Enraged was too high, which meant rage income when not enraged had to be too low to compensate. The bursts of rage feeling I described above are important, but the base rotation has to feel good as well! We're going to try some different things, such as Enrage granting flat 10 rage, but also increasing damage dealt by 5 or 10% while Enraged. Flat rage gain from Enrage will also help with scaling, because then crit and haste won't work in such synergy to increase rage generation at high gear levels.

We want crit and haste to be valuable of course, but we're trying to break the (exhausting) cycle where warriors are weak with bad gear and then so powerful with good gear that we have to nerf them. But we're also trying to keep some rage gain scaling with gear because that feels fun and helps the resource feeling unique. (Can you say overconstrained design challenge?)

I know I am tossing around a lot of rough ideas, and we will need to try a few internally before we release a new design into the wild. Remember the goal: we're not trying to nerf warriors. We're trying to make the resource something you interact with rather than something you ignore. We don't want warriors to be a cooldown-driven class.